Hogwarts Legacy difficulty settings - How to change and all differences


hogwarts legacy character on a bridge looking up at the sky
February 10, 2023: Now that the game has released, we've checked our information.

Want to know whether or not you can change your Hogwarts Legacy difficulty settings and what those difficulties are? Increasing the difficulty of games is a way to give them replayability and extra challenge. But most games will not allow you to change it once you've started. Does Hogwarts Legacy?

Hogwarts Legacy is an RPG set in the Harry Potter Universe, and it involves an open-world experience with spell-slinging combat. The difficulty setting you choose will impact this quite a bit, so picking the right one right out of the gate is important.

While you're here, if you're looking for more Hogwarts Legacy content, then be sure to check out our guide to Hogwarts Legacy DLC, the Wizards Field Guide, and our spells list.

What are the Hogwarts Legacy difficulty settings?

You'll pick your difficulty once the game has started during Character Customization. There are four known difficulty settings for Hogwarts Legacy. Those modes are Story, Easy, Normal and Hard.

Easy, Normal and Hard are pretty typical difficulties. Easy gives a light challenge, Normal is balanced with more damage and HP, and Hard is tough, requiring a solid grasp of the combat flow, a generous stock of potions and battle items, fast reflexes, and the ability to weigh up the pros and cons of jumping into a specific battle.

Story is a new mode that many games are implementing that allow the player to experience the story with very minimal gameplay effort. If you'd rather not have to think about slinging spell combos and just want to enjoy the ride, don't be ashamed to go with the narrative-driven setting.

You'll pick your difficulty once the game has started during Character Customization.

Can you change the difficulty setting in Hogwarts Legacy?

According to the Portkey Games accessibility features page, difficulty options can be changed at any time during normal gameplay. So you're free to try one and tweak things as you see fit. Want more of a challenge? Turn it up. Getting a little frustrated with a particular fight? Turn it down for a bit.

Does Hogwarts Legacy have a permadeath mode?

Want those curse spells to carry some weight? Sadly, there's no permadeath mode in Hogwarts Legacy just yet. There's every chance Portkey Games could add one in the future for a challenge run, but there's nothing of the sort in the game just yet. No matter the setting, you'll be able to load from your most recent checkpoint if you fall in battle (or from a cliff).

That being said, you can always just delete your character manually if you see a game over. We'll no doubt be seeing similar runs on Twitch soon - likely with people binding the controls to a wand (or a drum kit).

And that's all that we know about difficulty in Hogwarts Legacy. Be sure to check back as we'll update this page with any new information that get released.

While you're here, definitely check out some of our other Hogwarts Legacy content, such as our full quest list, our Helm of Urtkot quest walkthrough, and our guide to getting the Elder Wand in game.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Guides, Hogwarts Legacy, and Role Playing Games pages.